


A 14th Century Demon in a 21st Century World

by Zab43



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen, Hastur-centric (Good Omens), Introspection, Mentioned Crowley (Good Omens), POV Hastur (Good Omens), demonic work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:20:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25666576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zab43/pseuds/Zab43
Summary: Some musings from poor old fashioned Hastur who would have loved the 14th century so much........and what exactly happened with that priest after Hastur put 'doubt' in his mind?
Kudos: 10





	A 14th Century Demon in a 21st Century World

Before the apocalypse-that-wasn't Hastur had, by and large, enjoyed his work. Temptations, summoning, drawing up contracts, buying and collecting souls. A few simple prompts and promises popped into people's minds and a day's work flew by - the paperwork took longer of course.

Filling in form 115b could be torture - especially as they kept issuing new versions and mixing the boxes round so he ended up putting the "date of temptation" in the "date soul collected" box half the time. But even the paper-work wasn't too annoying, most of the time....

Well alright he hated the paper-work, but the actual work-work had been alright, fun even.

Now summonings were down, fewer people believed in demons he supposed. Although he'd never really enjoyed the sensation of his essence being dragged through space into some dingy room lit only with guttering candles. People always seemed to do summoning in damp, dark holes with no bar. Why they couldn't summon him in a tavern, or a well stocked wine cellar he didn't know.

It was even worse now people didn't take it seriously - he'd recently been summoned by a university's medieval history club as a joke! At least they had wine - although the mysterious disappearance of the entire lecture class was still talked about on campus.

Buying souls was usually a tedious business now too - money and fame were the only things people seemed to want today. He didn't think adding a few zeros to the end of a bank account balance, or collecting a million Instagram followers (whatever that was), was worth selling your soul for. People were odd sometimes.

Not much demand for "access to arcane knowledge" since these damn computers took over, spewing previously close-guarded (and definitely dubious) information into people's homes.

He'd enjoyed making up bits of "arcane knowledge" to feed to the little humans; knowledge was what had got them in trouble in the first place after all. He usually told them things that led to more trouble, maybe being executed for witchcraft or burning to death in a "turning base metal into gold" experiment gone wrong or similar. Fun times.

Sex was the other one, well "love" he supposed. Didn't see what was so great about love anyway. It seemed to turn these weird little humans into monsters. Obsessions, stalking, jealousy, domestic violence, suicides and murders - all caused by "love".

He didn't really remember what God's love felt like, but he was pretty sure it didn't involve most of the things humans did in its name. They'd turned it into a painful, dark emotion that practically did his work for him - all he had to do was sit back and watch (then fill out blessed form 115b for the umpteenth time). He conceded he didn't see much of the "hearts and flowers" romantic type of love in his line of work, so maybe he was biased.

Actual sex was usually disappointing too these days, never quite lived up to the obscene, idealised images he'd seen flickering on those now ubiquitous screens people stared at. He seemed to remember seeing "free internet pornography" written on one of Crowley's reports - underlined in red ink - typical.

There were hardly any "mysterious death that can't be attributed to me" requests now either. He was not entirely sure why, maybe people valued their soul more than a corpse nowadays. That at least would be sensible.

He suspected it was more to do with the fame and money side of things. Why kill someone when you can publicly ruin their reputation and prompt others to send them death-threats - maybe even carry them out? Now money could buy dreams, destroy or corrupt, overcome virtually all obstacles. So why kill?  
  
Perhaps people had just cottoned on to the idea that leaving someone alive but penniless, helpless, lost and broken was much more fun than merely killing them. He hoped so, even though he missed the killings.

No, the big business had always been "Temptations". He capitalised the word in his head to emphasise its importance.

Temptations looked easy on the surface - a violent man could easily be tempted into starting a fight, a lonely woman persuaded into going out to look for a one-night stand. No, the trick was finding a "pure" soul to corrupt (he shuddered slightly at the word "pure").

What Crowley had never appreciated was that further tainting already tarnished souls wasn't much of an achievement. Even his managers didn't seem to get it - it took more time, but polluting a "pure" person's mind with his own brand of disgusting foulness was an art-form.

He believed the modern "quantity over quality" approach was fundamentally unsound. You couldn't give tangible numbers to justify the miracles used to tie up a phone network, and where was the fun in it anyhow?

Now, prompting a celibate priest, who'd successfully overcome the lusts of his youth and was heading towards being a saint, to suddenly look up and see the pretty girls for the first time in years, that was the real thing. To get him to notice how their skimpy summer dresses barely covered their lithe figures, how their bodies looked so soft and inviting, to make him wonder "maybe I missed out", "maybe I wasted my time", and most treacherously "maybe it's not too late". Pushing him onto a path that would end in him seducing the young daughter of a parishioner, leaving her unmarried and pregnant in a deeply religious community and using the church's funds to skip the country - now that was craftsmanship.

Hastur sighed. Things weren't the same as they used to be. His heart (if he had one) just wasn't in it anymore. Even the last time he'd set a fire - a beautiful blaze lighting up the night sky for miles around - he'd gotten in trouble. Stupid nunnery, stupid nuns, and especially: stupid Crowley. Yes, it was all Crowley's fault.

It was definitely Crowley's fault that Hastur was now sat in the rain outside some government building struggling with a smart phone he didn't understand. His demon talons grew longer as his frustration mounted, making it even more difficult to get the blessed touch-screen to respond. This wasn't what he envisaged when he heard the word "hacking" - he'd been thinking "axes" not "data-breaches". He still wasn't sure how you could breach data anyway.

Stupid computers, stupid touch-screens, stupid 21st century - he really hated the 21st century. Things had been so much simpler before all this technology. 

Well, times are changing he thought; but they're not coming to an end he concluded miserably.


End file.
